All posts tagged name generator

One of the real attractions of Necromunda, is the idea of campaigns. Yes, the Underhive boxed game is fun (I’ve had a couple of play throughs now and it is a genuinely enjoyable game), but it’s not the big draw for me. I, like so many of you, want to create a deep dark world for my gangs to run through, fight through and interact with. I want their homes, hovels, workshops, mines and more to be fleshed out, built up and given as much personality as the gangers themselves.

I will be playing through a campaign in the new year with my good ol’ buddy, Henry whose Esher gang are coming along rather wonderfully, as I struggle to find the time to work on my Goliaths. But more on the minis later. We’re just going to be doing a small, two player campaign, but I want it to have as much of a narrative as possible. I want to create the atmosphere, and give our little slice of the Underhive, on the borders of our gangs’ territories some real personality.

So, how do we start doing this? Well, as with so many things, the name can help to craft the identity of an area. And seeing as this blog may as well be called the ‘Sci Fi Name Generator Blog’ these days, I cracked open the spreadsheets yet again, and began to craft something a bit different.

This name generator helps you to name the areas of your own Underhive realm. Essentially, you get your trusty D6s out and roll on the D66 tables below for your random areas. Use one or two descriptors (I find one usually does, but mix it up as much as you like), and one of the Area Types. Add “The” before the name if it makes it sound better (some do, some don’t), and enjoy! Use it how you see fit, and there’s no harm in rerolling things – not everything sounds great so you enjoy it as you want to.

Now, for gang specific areas – perhaps where your gangs are starting off, you can use the Gang Specific Area types. Just a D6 for each of these, and add the descriptors you roll/like.

Define how many areas you need/want, and make a little map for your own reference. You can draw this, make the areas whatever shape you’d like, and create your world. In the below example, I’ve just taken an image (it’s actually the industrial dockside area of Antwerp, Belgium, taken from Google maps satellite view and grey-scaled) and used a basic image editor to create this:

And straight away, the Underhive starts to come to life. The Lightless Stores are a particularly dark area of ancient, corroded storage containers, and sheds long abandoned and left. to the perpetual night. The Insect Stacks are bug-ridden, and full of carnivorous beasties of the invertebrate variety, while Golden Alley is a somewhat ironic name – a deal went down there long ago that made one man very rich and a lot of others very dead… And The Broken Tunnels lead to the rest of the Underhive, though they are full of pitfalls, rusted holes and treacherous gaps that have claimed many a ganger, and more dangers than you could imagine.

This is just a small campaign version played between two players, but you can go as big as you like:

Create your own slice of the Underhive and give it all the personality you can. You can even tailor your boards to match the names on the map (as much as your terrain stash and budget will allow of course). I hope you get some use out of it all and enjoy playing around with it – I’ve had a lot of fun building it up actually – almost more than the gang name generators.

On a different note, I wanted to alert you to the fact that Heresy And Heroes is on Instagram – you can find my account right here. It’s not just miniatures; you’ll be treated to life drawing efforts (along with other doodles), random shots of London, my ugly mug and a lot of pubs too. But if you want to follow me on there, you can keep up to date with my miniatures efforts in a different way.

As you can see, my first Goliath is now done. I’ve not had a chance to properly photograph the first member of the Jagged Aggressors yet, but if you follow the Instagram Account, you’ll see when I do. Or of course, you can just keep your eyes on the blog. I hope you have a great weekend, and some fun gaming and painting times. Onwards!

The news from the Warhammer 40,000 Open Day is in and we’ve got a new gang to ogle for Necromunda. To pretty much no-one’s surprise, the Orlock gang will be appearing next with a full plastic kit. There was one interesting surprise though. The Orlocks have gone… well, hipster.

In an earlier post, I joked a little about how the Orlock gang bore some resemblance to characters like John Rambo. Double denim and bandanas – that sort of look. Well, such assertions can’t be made of the new Orlock gang (though they might still be rocking double denim but in a slightly more interesting way) who look far more like the sort of folk you see hanging around Shoreditch or Brixton, drinking oat-milk flat whites while talking about bands you’re not cool enough to know about as they play with their beards. If you’re not from the UK, you’ll surely have your own havens for people who like to ride old-timey bicycles, wear clothes that are so uncool they’re cool, and have their millionaire daddies buy them grotty flats in communities that they ruin.

In a true stroke of originality from GW, this look has been blended with that of ‘industrial miner’. And I have to say that I really like it. The Orlocks now have much more of an identity than they ever did, just going by looks alone, and the House of Iron have some very fancy toys to play with (including perhaps the best looking powerfist I’ve ever seen). The harpoon gun is pretty darn sexy too, even if the guy carrying it bears a striking resemblance to myself. Good looking mini, that. In fact the other chap in the below picture looks very much like Henry South from 4gotowar.com which is also awesome (somewhat because I’ll be able to shoot him without going to prison – Sorry, Henry).

This is really showing off how far the designers and standards have come at GW HQ. That’s in no way a knock to the people who designed the original gangs (new designers are standing on their shoulders of course), but these guys no longer look like ‘just blokes’ and have some real personality and a lot of great details. And whereas the Goliaths and Eschers were updates to established cool identities, these Orlock chaps are a true reinvention. Based on these guys, I can’t wait to see more gangs appear throughout 2018.

These deep-down hipsters will be hitting the Underhive boards in early 2018, but for those of you either playing legacy gangs or already planning out how to field these mooks, I’ve got some name generators for you.

For your gang name, it’s the traditional initials game. First initial and Surname initial. That gives me The Jack-Hammer Apes which I rather like. There’s a general fist/miner/street-gang sort of theme to this. Think On The Waterfront meets The Warriors meets 40K. Even with their new look, I can’t shake the idea that these guys would say things like “Yous guys” while calling people “jabronies”. I know I would if I thought I could actually pull it off.

And now for your gang members. As with last time, you can use this however you like. I’ve been using the Name 1 columns to give me my basic ganger names (though with this one, sometimes I’ve just been using the first column, and sometimes both – the name length gives some nice variance), Name 1 and Name 2 columns for my champs, and the whole lot to give my leader a name. But you do you – make it work however you can or want to. D66 and there’s no worries about rerolling if you don’t like what you got.

And there you have it. Will I be buying these guys when they appear in early 2018? You better believe I will be. I’m currently working on my Goliath gang but I’m doing a starting-a-campaign sized gang (6 guys) so I should have some painted things to show off soon. Until then, happy painting. Onwards!

Because you love them, because I have nothing better to do with my free time, and because we’re all just so darned excited for Necromunda: Underhive to be released in the very near future, I’ve put together a few name generators here for you to enjoy. The dingiest depths of the 41st Millennium are full of characters and personalities, and if you’re struggling to come up with appropriate names for yours, hopefully this post will be of some service to you.

First up, we have the Escher Gang Name Generator. I wanted the words here to evoke ideas around not only femininity, but also poisons and chemicals – the stock and trade of the Escher clan. As with many name generators on this blog that have come before it, you take the first letter of your first name, and the first letter of your surname, and this will give you a gang name for your band of femme fatales.

So, in this instance, as my initials are JA, I get The Jealous Aces, which ain’t half bad. If your initials are SD, you’d get The Stiletto Dames which I happen to think is a seriously cool name invoking an idea of Film Noir assassins played by the likes of Lauren Bacall or Katherine Hepburn. Nice. What did you get? Stick it in the comments below and let me know what you thought of it.

Next up, is the Goliath Gang Name Generator. I want this to bring to mind ideas of extreme masculinity, and also the forges and foundries where this bunch of meatheads hammer away. You get how to do this by now, so give this one a go:

In this instance, I get The Jagged Aggressors, but if your initials are HS, you’d get the Hotwire Skulls. Personally, I want someone with the initials UW to use this, because I miss tassels and face-paint. Also, it would kind of fit with the whole hulking(sic) steroid user thing. Moving on…

Now, that’s usually all that you get from me with these things, right? Well, this time, I decided to spend a lot of my free time (trying to save money and stay out of the pubs a bit with Christmas coming up) working on something a bit more in depth. As mentioned, this is a game full of characters and personalities, and having defined names to attach to every member of your gang makes it all the more personal. So, I’ve been a bit ambitious. I’ve created Gang Member Name Generators for both House Escher and House Goliath. Here you go…

There are no hard and fast rules as to how you use these. It’s done on a D66 basis, and you can use it as you see fit. I’ve kind of been using the following formula: Gangers get a name combo from the Name 1 columns, Champions get a ‘Name 1’ and a ‘Name 2’, and Champions get something from each of the 3 Names. When I rolled my D66 for the Goliath Gang, it meant I got the following:

Ganger 1: Slamgorn

Ganger 2: Joltnak

Ganger 3: Drillsnag

Ganger 4 : Skardrag

Ganger 5: Fragcred

Ganger 6: Harksmelt

Ganger 7: Skorcon

Champion 1: Lankstab Goreshrieker

Champion 2: Tragras Bloodchomper

Gang Leader: Drakloss “The Imperator” Toothcrusher

I’m interested to see how well this one works to be honest. I’ve never tried these sorts of name generators before, but like I said, you can use them how you want. Just have names made from column 1 and column 4, or just use the nicknames, or Name 2 and nicknames combined… it’s up to you and I hope you get a bit of fun out of it however you use it. Or just enjoy five minutes wasting time when you should be working.

Tell me what you think in the comments below. Get any good names? Get any bad ones? I should have something painted to show you soon too, so stay tuned for that. But with all of that done, I shall just wish you happy painting, and happy naming. Onwards!

I figured, as I’ve been banging on about the Desk Project that I’m doing at the moment rather a lot recently, I’d do something fun and silly for this Friday. So, to give you a couple of minutes of hopefully Orkish giggles at the end of a long week, I give you the Ork name generator. Now, long ago, I did the Ork clan name generator and it was a lot of fun. But I wanted to test myself (and particularly my Orkish vocabulary) by making a generator that can help you come up with the name of an Ork character, boss or boy. So here you go:

As you can probably tell, it works pretty simply. Your first initial and second initial make up your Ork’s forename, and the first letter of your street name and mother’s maiden name will give you the Ork’s surname. Well, I don’t think it’s really a surname – more of an dis-honorific. A nickname… whatever it is, this is how it works. So my name would be Jabarm Squigtroopa. If your name was Rob Stevens and you lived on Jones St, and your mother’s maiden name was Howard, your Ork name would be Redshag Jawhacka. Get it?

Well, you know the drill. Have a go, leave a comment below and tell me what you think of it. Did you like what you got, can you think of improvements, or do you now wish you were called something else? Either way, I hope it gives you a brief moment of Orky goodness after a hard week – you’ve earned your teef, and a good weekend to be sure.

And one final word about the desks project; I’ve started to build the page! It’s coming along great and we’ve had more submissions than I was expecting. Provided I can get everything organised by next week, it should be going up then, so keep an eye on the blog for that update. Onwards!

Well, if I learned one thing last week, it was that you lot like name generators. It’s been a rather warm week where i am now, and so there’s not a great deal appealing about sitting in my baking hot flat watching my paints dry out as I water down the acrylics with my own sweat. Yes, it’s that hot here. But even hotter than that, was the blog post that I put out last week that contained a couple of new name generators for the armies in your Warhammer 8th Edition box set.

Almost a thousand visitors came to Heresy & Heroes on one day which was incredible. And lots of good comments both here, on social media sites and via emails too. And so, because a couple of people asked and because I wanted to do it, I’m giving you three more name generators! Because I did a Nurgle one last time, followers of the other dark Gods were a little miffed that they had been left out, and I shall now rectify this…

Also:Check out the links at the bottom of the page to the automated random name generators that have been uploaded to Ritual Miniatures. You can have plenty of fun refreshing those.

Tzeentch Chaos Space Marine Warband Name Generator

For all you Thousand Sons players out there whose miniatures no longer follow Ahriman and Magnus from within the XV legion, I bring new way of coming up with a new warband name…

I got The Jackels Of The Ruinous Alter – quite fitting for a band of Half-Dead Space Egyptians. What did you get? And are you happy with it?

Slaanesh Chaos Space Marine Warband Name Generator

Ah, my favourites. This name generator is all about pleasing She Who Thirsts, and pandering to The Prince of Pain and Pleasure itself, Slaanesh. Plenty of warped takes on conventionally unwarped things should come from this one…

I’m more than happy with The Juggernauts Of Arrogance (I know ‘juggernaut’ is a bit Khorney, but even that is a little subversive which fits fine with Slaanesh) but did you get something even better?

Khorne Chaos Space Marine Warband Name Generator

And then there’s Khorne. I was tempted to make every entry here a variation on either ‘blood’ or ‘skull’ but in the end I tried to be different. A little bit, anyway. ‘Skulls’ is still an option. But every warband that already exists that I could find was something like ‘The Blood Slaughter’ or ‘The Slaughtering Skulls’ or something like that. So, hopefully this will give you something a bit different…

In this instance, my army would be called The Jagged Axe which is perfectly Khorney. What did you think about this one?

Anyway, that’ll be it for these for a little while probably (unless a lot of requests come in). Next up will be more on my painting efforts and a bit more on the 8th Edition changes – played my first game of it yesterday and have a lot of positive things to say about it. A couple of downers too, but it was an overwhelmingly positive experience. Onwards!

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And for those of you who want to try something a little different and far more usefully put together, the eminently talented Dan over at Ritual Miniatures has put together some fancy automated versions as well. Check out the Tzeentch, Slaanesh and Khorne random warband name generators now!

As a bit of fun, and because we’re just a couple of days away from the release of Warhammer 40,000 8th Edition, I have put together two new name generators to help you do just that – generate some names. As well as the Primaris Marine Chapter Name Generator, there’s a Death Guard War Band Name Generator too – how’s that for a slice of fried adamantium?!

Let’s start off with the “Good” guys; The Primaris Marines. Now of course, you can add these hulking, super-sized killing machines to any existing chapter, from Blood Angels to Space Wolves, from Nova Marines to Howling Griffins, but if you’re one of the people thinking about collecting a brand new chapter, made purely of Primaris Marines, you can do that too. And that’s where this name generator comes in. As with before in the classic marine variant, you take your initials to get your chapter name. Here’s it is:

Now, I’ll come clean, there are some repetitions in there from the original because some of the more high-scoring-in-scrabble letters just don’t have that many useful words. You shouldn’t get something completely the same, but if you do, try using your middle initial, or the name of a loved one instead. As my initials are JRA, I would be the ‘Jade Avengers’ but if I wanted to change things up a little, I could always switch to ‘Jade Redeemers’ or ‘Revenant Avengers’. What did you get? And how do you like it?

And now for the really fun one; the Nurgle Name Generator. If you’re starting a new Nurgle marine force and you don’t want to go with the Death Guard or any of the other existing War Bands that venerate the generous Grandfather, here’s a war band name generator for you:

Sorry to all the Dave Greens in this world – you’re stuck with it. It was so much fun coming up with this one. All those lovely, plague-ridden words. Everything should sound gribbly, rotten, horrible and gross. In this iteration, I would be building the ‘Jagged Afflicters’ War Band, but if I wasn’t too happy with that (I am – I may well work on those soon!), then I could go with The ‘Jagged Rot’ or even ‘Rusting Afflicters’. How about you? Have you found something suitably gross and disgusting?

I hope you had fun with those – I certainly enjoyed making them. And it definitely helped me stave off the ravenous hunger I have to get hold of the 8th Box set. Speaking of which, I’m likely picking it up on Sunday, but will do a review for it here next week. Onwards!

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Update: The very clever and talented Dan at Ritual Miniatures has created a far prettier and slightly more randomised version of these Name Generators over at his site. Check out his name generator now!

How do you come up with a good Space Marine chapter name? In this ‘just for fun’ post, I’ve built you not one, but two name generators to help you bestow a monicker onto your Space Marine Chapter, and also your Chaos Space Marine Warband too! How’s that for a slice of generosity on toast?!

I was talking to a few people about my post from last week where I was listing all the things that I liked about Space Marines (because I’m that sort of annoying person who will write a blog post and talk incessantly about it afterwards). When asked ‘how many chapters are there?’ I replied ‘Well, loads. Like a thousand. Maybe more!’. The follow up to this was ‘Well then, were I to create a new chapter, how would I come up with a name that doesn’t already exist?’ to which I then replied ‘…I dunno…’. The truth is, there is nothing new under the Sol, and the likelihood is that when you’ve come up with a name, someone, maybe even GW themselves, got there first.

But in an effort to improve your odds, I have created the Space Marine Chapter Name Generator. It’s not perfect. If your name is ‘Chris Lloyd’ you will end up with the Celestial Lions, and if you’re ‘Sam Smith’, you’ll get the ‘Silver Skulls’, both of which are definitely already taken (and also, I know people called Chris Lloyd and Sam Smith so apologies to them). The sharper among you will have probably already worked out how this works, so let’s have a look:

Going by the above, my chapter should be the Jade Angels – not bad! What’s yours? Stick a comment below and let me know what you think about it? Also, if you do come up with a name that’s already taken, or if you’re not quite happy with it, try flipping it around and adding ‘of’/’of the’ in the middle. So the Jade Angels become the ‘Angels of Jade’.

But I promised you more, and after making this, with all its noble nouns and heraldic adjectives, the Ruinous Powers convinced me to do the same again, but this time with the Chaos Space Marines. So, for you heretics out there, here you go:

That gives me the Jealous Axes – very Slaaneshi if you ask me. But again, that could be flipped to the ‘Axes of Jealousy’. If you like what you got, stick it in a comment down below. What would your warband be like? Khorney? Nurgley?

And that’s it! No deeper meaning than that – just an excuse to do something fun on a slow weekday, and an added celebration as the Space marines turn 30. If neither of the above are your thing, I did a similar thing for Ork mobs way back when – you can find it right here. I hope you enjoyed them. Onwards!